36: The Best Practices for Time Management

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board members Red Russak and Soumeya Benghanem welcome Mark Cramer, Abhishek Bhardwaj (PayPal), Sangeeta Kulkarni (Compass) to discuss time management. Throughout a PM’s work journey, time is essential and one of the most valuable assets that is difficult to manipulate or control. But with the right tools and frameworks paired with experience and expertise in the field, time can be managed and allocated effectively.  

Support for How to Succeed in Product Management is brought to you by Apptentive, which enables product managers to measure shifts in customer emotion and gather actionable feedback across the mobile customer journey. To learn more, go to Apptentive.com/UW.

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 05:33 Let’s talk about time management
• 09:21 New PMs often face time management challenges
• 17:48 Tools and frameworks that help manage time
• 32:22 How do you find an MVP?
• 34:42 Finding balance between what needs to be solved and how to solve it
• 40:03 Use frameworks as loose suggestions to accomplish something
• 44:09 What happened to our commute time?
• 46:50 Always do the most difficult task first
• 50:56 Taking breaks in between meetings
• 56:03 Trick your brain that there’s a big reward